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The blog hasn’t been updated in a bit. My apologies. I’m working on larger pieces for gallery commitments and commissions which take a long time. I also have a couple of in-depth blog posts in the works which require a lot of study, expenditure and filming on my part.

That said, I was in Varese, Italy last month to sell my Defender (I’m landscape painting from a 2-wheel drive Kia now), and did a few small sketches which are posted here.

Sacro Monte. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.

Varese #2. 35 x 25 cm, oil on panel.

There were also a couple of interviews with me posted online: One here on The Artist’s Road, and another on painting near Volpaia, Italy posted here on Outdoor Painter. Outdoor painter also wrote briefly about my post on Adro Hibbard’s ‘Hibbard Mitten’ with some more photographs of the artist working. For anyone interested in plein air painting in the snow you can read about it here.

The blog format also changed on its own due to a software update on my host. I’ll try to fix the header to look more elegant when I have a minute.

I was in Paris for the week painting landscapes. Here are a few of the plein air paintings from around town. Landscape (or cityscape) painting in a big city like Paris is a lot of work. Traveling around takes forever, there are so many people, and there is so much subject matter to chose from. I restricted myself to the Tuileries Gardens as it was near the metro line which I needed to take to get home. I figured if I started walking and looking for views I would never stop.

Edward Seago’s plein air work is a continual inspiration to me, and many of his Parisian paintings were of the Tuileries Gardens.

The Gates to the Tuileries Gardens. 18 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

Empty Chairs. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

Autumn in the Tuileries. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.

The Afternoon Chat. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

The d’Orsay at Dusk. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

I lived in Paris for eight months in the late 90’s and really loved my time there. I rented a tiny room on a houseboat outside the city and got a free studio space in an artist’s squat in Belleville (you can see my semi-communal space in a film someone made here, I’m briefly on screen at the 43 min, 20 second mark). I would draw from the sculptures in the Louvre everyday on my way to the studio by using a museum pass and the back escalator to get around the lines. It is always a pleasure going back.

There is an article on me in Plein Air Magazine, available both online and in print (in the US). An article I wrote on Isaac Levitan’s use of glazes is in the online magazine Artists on Art. And finally I have a painting on the cover of Dan’s Papers in the Hamptons, as well as a small article inside.

Here are a few more paintings from my two weeks in Plyos, Russia. The weather has been really uncooperative, with rain and/or wind pretty much everyday.

Green Noise is the name of the cultural exchange event here in Plyos. This year is eight ‘Italian’ plein air painters working together with eight Russian artists. The exhibition of our work opened yesterday and will be on display until mid-October.

Rain, Plyos. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

We went out as a group to paint nocturnes in the rain on a few occasions.

The Bridge in Plyos, Nocturne. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.

Evening, Plyos. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

Autumn Trees. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

Below is the updated version of the trinket seller, I needed to change the value on her shawl.

Trinket Seller. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

We had a lot of fun in the evenings, drinking vodka with the Russian artists and discussing painting and painters. There are a lot of great artists working today in Russia and I’ll post some links to their work in the future.

In the meantime, here is a short video of us painting in the common room one evening:

Here, quickly, are some of the paintings from my first week here in Plyos, Russia.

Street in Plyos. 60 x 80 cm, oil on canvas.

I’m here as part of a cultural exchange, organized by the Landscape Museum in town, between Italy and Russia (I snuck in by living in Italy for 20 years). Past years have included Cyprus and France, and next year will be an exchange with Dutch landscape painters.

The Church of the Resurrection (sketch). 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.

Church of the Resurrection in the Rain. 50 x 60 cm, oil on canvas.

Plyos is the small town on the Volga where Isaac Levitan lived and painted and it’s become something of a Russian Giverny for realist painters working today.

Birch Grove. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

As Isaac Levitan is a favorite landscape painter of mine, it’s wonderful for me to come here and see where he worked.

Trinket Seller. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

Above Plyos, 40 x 60 cm, oil on canvas.

The Church above Plyos. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

This is just the work from the first week. I’ll post again when we’re finished. The weather has been terrible, and promises to be terrible the whole trip.

Edit: Below is a photograph of my working situation for the “Church of the Resurrection in the Rain”.

Let’s talk about some other living artists for a change. There is a lot of great painting being done at the moment, and I often feel that my colleagues and students in Europe aren’t aware of many of the great contemporary painters working in America, and vice-versa.

This post is mainly about the contemporary artists who have most influenced my own work. Before the internet and social media it was often hard to see work by contemporary naturalistic painters, but I was very lucky to stumble across shows from time to time.

I studied and taught on and off for ten years with Charles Cecil, so the technical side of my painting was most influenced by his training with R. H. Ives Gammell, as well as Cecil’s own research into historic painting methods. I later taught at the FAA for Daniel Graves, and they are producing both great work and great painters.

Joseph McGurl is probably the living landscape painter who most strongly influence my own landscape work. I saw a show of his at the Hammer Gallery in NYC when I was first starting out, and up until then I wasn’t aware that this level excellence in landscape painting was still possible.

Of the plein air painters working today, Joe Paquet is the one who’s work I like the most. We painted together this August in Ireland and in our discussions in the evenings I feel we have very similar ideas about the state of landscape painting today, as well as the direction in which we would like to see it heading. T. Allen Lawson is another painter who’s work I really admire.

Over on this side of the Atlantic, the painter who probably influence my work plein air landscapes was Julian Barrow, who passed away this week. I also saw a show of his in New York and was amazed by the variety of his work. In that exhibition I never saw a remotely similar light-effect, subject, or composition twice. The man never shied away from any subject, no matter how complicated or unusual, and it really showed me the vast range one could achieve with plein air painting.

The big realist painters over here who were on my radar from early on would be Odd Nerdrum and Antonio Lopez Garcia. Though American ex-pat and, until recently, neighbor of mine Richard Maury‘s work always appealed to me much more.

Trevor Chamberlain and David Curtis are two great contemporary English plein air painters whose work I’ve always enjoyed.

There are lots of other great painters out there who I look at regularly. These are just the ones who I came across early enough for them to influence my own work. If anyone has any others to recommend, please leave them in the comments.

My exhibition at the Grenning Gallery opens this Saturday, August 24th. The reception will be from 6:30 to 8pm in Sag Harbor.

I’ve been painting on the East End of Long Island in the summers now for 14 years, and it’s always great to be back. This show will include the following Sag Harbor paintings from the week before the show.

Below are a few plein air pieces from the island of Korčula, on the Dalmatian Coast in Southern Croatia.

Pizzeria on Korčula. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.

Laundry in the Wind, Korčula. 30 x 20 cm, oil on panel.

Boat Crane, Korčula. 30 x 20 cm, oil on panel.

Late Afternoon on Korčula. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.

Doorway, Korčula. 30 x 20 cm, oil on panel.

I also worked on a larger piece en plein air, but it needs some polish still before I post a photo. Next year my plan is to park myself for a couple of months on these islands to get more larger plein air work done.

Here are some of the sketches from the last week at the 2013 Art in the Open Festival in Wexford, Ireland. I would highly recommend the festival to anyone interested in plein air painting with some of the friendliest people in the world. This was my second year participating and again the organisers had found some great locations for the paint-outs over the course of the week. There was even sun most of the time this year.

Boat on the Road, Slade. 20 x 30 cm, oil on linen.

The Sunken Garden, Newtownbarry House, Bunclody

The Stables at Newtownbarry House. 20 x 30 cm, oil on linen.

Musicians at the T. Morris Pub in Wexford. 20 x 30 cm, oil on linen.

I love traditional music as much as traditional art. The pub where all the painters meet in the evenings, T. Morris has great musicians playing during the week. The above sketch I did one evening, painting alongside Antti Routiola and Leon Holmes. I was working under an orange light, so the painting came out a bit blue. Here is a short video of part of it, to give a feel for the scene:

Here are a few paintings from the last week in Tuscany. I did this large portrait of my wife reading under an olive tree. Being able to get far back is really great for painting portraits, even outside (I’ve discussed this before).

Here was the set-up:

Plein air portraiture in the Tuscan countryside.

As idyllic as it looks, it was ridiculously hot. After the last four hour midday session I got sick from the heat and had cold sweats, nausea and a headache. An occupational hazard.

These were some of the smaller sketches:

Three Tuscan Cloud Studies. 20 x 14 cm ea.

Laundry and Lemon Trees. 25 x 35 cm, oil on panel.

Hay Bales along the Road, Noce. 20 x 30 cm, oil on panel.

Pistoletto’s “Headache” at Porta Romana, 20 x 20 cm, oil on panel.

The above painting went face-down into the dirt when the dog pulled the easel over, hence the debris. Another occupational hazard. The trick to getting much of the dirt or sand out is to let the painting dry completely, then clean it.